The penalty follows a public inquiry into the firm’s bus services, held in Leeds last month.

It was disclosed in the inquiry that during a three day monitoring exercise in 2014, more than a third of its buses were either cancelled, early or late.

Its overall punctuality rate that year was only 80 per cent, and last year, during a similar exercise, one in five services was not on time.

Deputy Traffic Commissioner Anthony Seculer ruled that most disturbances had been foreseeable, and that the company had failed to meet the needs of the travelling public.

He said: “There is recognition by the operator that the current punctuality performance is not satisfactory and I am satisfied from the witnesses I have heard and the evidence I have seen that there is a genuine commitment from the operator to further improvement.”

Mr Seculer added that the company had undertaken a “comprehensive network review” to amend timetables.

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